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Oman

Scuba Diving

Disclaimer: If you suffer from any amount of thalassophobia (fear of the sea) please skip this one. The sea is a wonderful, beautiful place, and my posts usually aim to educate on the safety of being surrounded by even the most feared sea creatures. This post is for people who enjoy the spookier things in life.  

Oman

Cute Animals, Scuba Diving, Top Wildlife Experiences, Underwater Photography

The water in Oman was cold, too cold for my liking. It was also green and murky, enough so to make me wonder why so many of the European guests kept coming back for more. I had spent six weeks telling myself it was only for two hours a day. Surely anything is tolerable for two hours a day. Since I was working, bringing my camera along had not been an option, but now the end of my stay in Oman was drawing near and I had no photographic evidence to show for it. Was it worth venturing back into

Oman

Culture, Foodie

Continued from: Muscat City Tour - Part I Mutrah Souq We drove to the harbor area where the Sultan’s pair of matching cruise ships, or mega yachts, or whatever you would call them were moored. They were sand-colored just like the rest of the surroundings. The scenery was still a bit baffling to me. On the one hand, you had miles and miles of desolate, scorched earth, and then suddenly popping up out of nowhere, you'd see some crazy display of opulence.  It worked to our advantage on the water, because out of the 40 miles of coastline we covered, there

Oman

Culture

Muscat is the capital, port city of Oman. It is wedged in the desert between mountains and ocean, and offers all your arid delights, from 16th-century Portuguese forts, to modern shopping malls and regal palaces.  No one can seem to agree on the true origins of the word Muscat. Lonely Planet, forever romanticizing even the most unpalatable corners of the globe in true wanderlust fashion, says that the name means ‘safe anchorage.’ And this is indeed a very poetic way to describe a city in which the sea plays such an important role. Oman is even said to have been the

Oman

Culture

Oman’s ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, is said (see what I did there?) to be to be a huge fan of classical music and the arts. So much so, in fact, that in 2001 he ordered an opera house be built in the capital city of Muscat.  Sultuan Qaboos attended the Opera's inaugural performance of Puccini’s opera, Turandot, and hasn’t been back to the opera house since. The show must go on though. The Royal Opera House Muscat hosts up to 80 performances every season, including opera, jazz, ballet, pipe organ, Islamic, and traditional performances.  Visiting the opera was a

Oman

Culture, Misadventures

1. Find an occasion that requires an outfit.  When you think of the Middle East, what comes to mind for most Americans are images of either war-ravished waste-lands or wealthy, fossil fuel tycoons. Culture, in the sense of visual and performing arts are usually assumed to not have much of a place in the desert. And yet Oman’s sultan, a fan of classical music himself, ordered the building of an opera house in 2001. Fletch and I knew nothing about this, but when Stefan and Tanja asked us if we wanted to go to the opera, I was all too excited

Oman

Misadventures, Scuba Diving

A few lovely ladies who also blog and myself recently formed a little group where we swap articles to edit for each other prior to publishing. My first post on Oman came back with a note that said, “Can you add what makes this a good place to dive? As I’m not a big diver myself, I’d love to know why the Gulf of Oman is a good place to dive.” A perfectly fair question, and one that should definitely be addressed if you fancy yourself a halfway decent writer. I had to laugh at it though. Oh, if only

Oman

Misadventures

“The air of the place had something Mediterranean or maybe Caribbean about it. Will had never been out of England, so he couldn’t compare it with anywhere he knew, but it was the kind of place where people came out late at night to eat and drink, to dance and enjoy music. Except that there was no one here, and the silence was immense.” -Philip Pullman, The Subtle Knife Panoramic view of the harbor at Jebel Sifah, Oman Fletch and I walked outside the flat on our first morning in Sifah, Oman, eager to see our surroundings after arriving and promptly crashing into

Oman

Belated Updates, Cute Animals, Travelogue

I had relatively few expectations flying into Oman. Usually I do some research into a new country first, and I had bought the Oman cultural guide book, but knowing that we were going to be at a Westernized resort for the majority of the time turned me into a lazy researcher, instead relying on the few bits of information we had gleaned from our friends. The rest I could figure out once we arrived. Fletch and I were flying to Oman to help out our friends Stefan and Tanja with their busy season at the dive resort where they were currently